World Archery Championships: Indian Women's Compound Team Bag Gold in Berlin

Jun 07, 2023

The Indian women’s compound team of Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Aditi Swami and Parneet Kaur clinched a gold medal in the World Archery Championships after beating Mexico in the final on Friday.

The Indian trio won 235-229 to open the gold medal account for the country in the championships.

Earlier, India had beaten Colombia 220-216 in the semifinals after a 228-226 win over Chinese Taipei in the quarterfinals.

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The Indian troika dealt defending champions Colombia a shocking blow as the women in blue registered a 220-216 win in the final four to enter the final of the event on Wednesday.

However, Indian hopes in the compound men’s and mixed-team events ended after tight defeats. In the men’s event, Abhishek Verma, Ojas Deotale and Prathamesh Jawkar went down in the quarterfinals to the Netherlands 230-235.

In the mixed category, Deotale and Jyothi Surekha were pipped by the USA 154-153 in the round of the last eight. Earlier, Indian archers failed to secure Paris Olympics team quota places after making quarterfinal exits in both men’s and women’s recurve events.

The tournament offers first tickets to the next year’s Olympics for the top-three finishers in team and individual events. The men’s recurve team of Dhiraj Bommadevara, Rajat Chauhan and Tushar Shelke lost to India’s nemesis Korea 1-5 (49-55, 57-57, 53-55).

The women’s recurve triumvirate of Bhajan Kaur, Ankita Bhakat and Simranjeet Kaur lost to the Netherlands 2-6 (49-48, 52-53, 48-50, 54-57). They took the opening set to go 2-0 up, but only to lose the next three.

India’s next hope to make the cut from the ongoing tournament will be in the individual section that gets underway on Thursday.

Army man Bommadevara will be the biggest hope, having grabbed the second seeding from the qualification round of men’s individual recurve section.

India also disappointed in the recurve mixed team event, despite a favourable draw because of their fourth-place finish in the qualification.

The duo of Bommadevara and Ankita, who got a bye into the last-16, lost out to lower-ranked Italy 4-5 (35-37, 36-35, 39-37, 34-36) (16-17) in the shoot-off.

The next round of Paris Games qualifiers will be the Continental Games — for India it would be the Hangzhou Asian Games in October where mixed team champions and two individuals per gender will make the cut.

The Asian Championship in November in Bangkok and next year’s Antalya World Cup in June are the last two qualifying tournaments.

But in the worst-case scenario, India will still stand a chance to qualify by virtue of their top-8 of the World ranking, which will be awarded as per the list updated on June 24, 2024.